教育研究本体论的再认识:从意识到制度

Ontological Foundations of Educational Research Reconsidered:From Consciousness to Institution

在教育研究的范式争议中,对教育研究对象的本体论探讨是一个重要的基础议题。本文首先梳理和检讨二十世纪中叶以来有关个人意识、社会集体意识以及社会制度之本体论基础的主要论述,并综合出一个可应用于教育研究之对象的本体论探讨的分析架构,在此基础上尝试厘清与界定教育研究的本体论基础;最后指出教育研究指向“树人”之事业,其研究对象横跨个人自我意识的培育、社区文化的构建以及国家民族集体意识之铸造。面对这庞杂繁复多层次的主题内容,立足人文科学与实在主义的教育本体论概念架构,教育研究中质性与量化方法的分隔表征是对教育不同向度与不同层次主题的不同聚焦。

The ontological enquiry of the subject matters of educational studies has been one of the essential constituent issues in the paradigm war of educational research.This paper will begin with a review of the major theoretical discourses on ontological foundations,ranging from individual consciousness and collective consciousness,to social institution.It will then try to construct an analytical framework applicable to the enquiry of the ontological foundation of educational research.Based on the belief that education is an enterprise of cultivation of human,this paper will then identify the ontological footings of subject matters of education,which include nurturing individual self-consciousness,constituting communal cultures,and building of collective consciousness of the nation-state.Based upon the conceptual framework of heterogenous and multi-level subject matters and that of the perspectives of realism and human sciences,we come to believe that the qualitative and quantitative divide found in the methodological discourse on educational research is but the representations of different focuses on the various dimensions and levels of the subject matters of educational studies,ranging from consciousness to institution or from mind to culture.